The Value of Life

People are more than globs of carbon compounds organized by DNA. We, yes, you and I, were created and designed by God, in His own image. In the second chapter of the Bible, the declaration is made, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7 NKJV).

For all of you animal lovers, yes, treat your critters humanely, but they are not equal with us. Human beings are at the apex of the creature pyramid. Our eyes are on the front of our heads which makes us a predator. A five-hundred-pound black bear is much more likely to run from us than attack.

We are not gods, but we do have the spark of divinity in us. We were created in the image of God. Just as God exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so he created us as a triune being with a spirit, soul, and body.

The main point to this: We were created in the image of God with a soul, and everyone is inherently spiritual. A person is a spiritual being regardless of their morals or religious leanings, people can be spiritually righteous or spiritually evil.

Every individual is valued by God. There is an inherent worth to every person regardless of how they look. One of the Ten Commandments plainly states, “You shall not murder” (Exod. 20:13 NKJV). The taking of a human life is murder. The first murder happened when Cain killed his brother Abel. God said Abel’s blood cried out from the ground to His ears. (See Gen. 4:10.)

Throughout history men have classified people to lower forms of humanity or even as non-human to justify their abuse whether it was slavery, oppression, or genocide. Slave owners from the beginning of civilization justified slavery by erroneously viewing certain groups, races, or classes of people as non-human or a lower class of humans.

Nazis saw Jews as less than human and mentally retarded individuals as a burden on society, killing them to “purify” their race. There seems to be no limit to the length people will go to justify all sorts of sin and evil.

Evil men see vulnerability in a group of people and seek to abuse and oppress them with their evil justification for their own profit, power, and/or pleasure.

Workers have been paid poverty wages because rich men thought they were not worthy of a higher standard of living. Slaves were owned and sold because profiteers twisted their view of human dignity resulting in the enslavement of people whether it was the conquered Slavic people of the ninth century AD (from which the word slave originated) to bartered Blacks from Africa during the four centuries of the transatlantic slave trade beginning in the 16th century.

We should not be in a hurry to congratulate ourselves as the modern enlightened and morally superior people of today’s world. Slavery still exists today with no apparent rush to abolish it. Our U.S. Department of State’s website gives an estimation of human trafficking. They estimate 27.6 million people involved in “forced labor” with 6.3 million people sex trafficked [sex slaves]. (www.state.gov/humantrafficking-about-human-trafficking/)

Some groups estimate almost 50 million people are enslaved around the world today. It is also estimated about 14,500 to 17,500 people are sex trafficked in the United States each year with the majority being females.

How do the traffickers and consumers of modern-day slavery justify their actions? With the same evil heart as in the 16th century, they do not value humans as children of God.

What about abortion? You hear the refusal of many to call a baby in the womb a real human. Let that sink in for a moment. Sound familiar? If you dehumanize a human, you can justify any action. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s secondary definition of fetus is this, “specifically: a developing human from usually two months after conception to birth.” So, what would some call a fifty-nine-day old baby? Probably an “embryo” but not a human.

There are many politicians, doctors, activists, etc. who would allow an abortion up until the time of birth. It is difficult to get a pro-abortion politician to put a stamp on the day it would not be okay to abort a viable baby. Many of that number probably would be okay to terminate an unwanted baby’s life after live birth but would not say it out loud—for now—a few have, with veiled speech.

Our culture has gone from very few abortions, to Bill Clinton’s “Safe, Legal, and Rare”, to now when women on bull horns declare how joyfully they celebrate their abortions. Can I stop and cry here?

Euthanasia as an approved practice will be the next more broadly advocated practice to be put forth by the brainiacs with no conscience. If the dehumanization mindset continues, when will old people, debilitated, and infirmed just drain too many resources and suddenly the activists will become advocates of killing cloaked as mercy showing? Perhaps a veiled euthanasia will be carried out but not explained, where the old and infirmed are denied certain medicines or procedures so they will just flutter away on the wings of so-called natural causes.

Life is precious and needs to be cherished. When we sow seeds of less-than human principles, inhumane things begin to happen. There is a correlation in the spiritual realm to the earthly realm. When a nation or a people dehumanize humans there is a price of blood that God requires. Just as Cain was held accountable for Abel, so we are held accountable by God for bloodshed.

Here is something to think about. Slavery in the United States came to an end in the bloodiest war of our nation (Civil War) with the death of an estimated 620,000 soldiers killed and an unknown number of civilians killed. The economic toil was massive as well. We call it war, maybe God calls it judgment.

As a culture, we have celebrated violence as entertainment. Many movies and television shows have shown thousands of shootings and killings. There are explicit and gory video games where young people and older folks as well have the pleasure of killing via video without the real blood and real guilt. We have hardened our hearts and laundered murder by an image on a screen.

After decades of life-less principles and mindsets, now we have mass killings and unsafe cities. When someone charges into a school killing our innocent children we gasp, “How could they do such a thing?” We have dehumanized humans, spit in the face of God, forsook the principles of God’s Word, and let our children raise themselves. What did we think would be the outcome? Oh, right! We didn’t think!

There has been a sowing and cultivation of dehumanization, a devaluation of life itself, and a celebration of lawlessness, so now we are reaping death. We reap what we sow. It happens without fail.

What do we do? We need to get back to the principles of God’s Word where people are considered the children of God and every soul precious in His sight. Life cannot really be explained by the brightest of scientists. Why? Because the essence of life is the Breath of God and it is beyond the spectrum of science, in an eternal realm beyond a microscope or telescope.

God alone gives life, who do we think we are to take it?

Yours on the Journey,

Harry L. Whitt